The Kashmiri people
(Kashmiri: कॉशुर, کشُر Koshur) are a Dardic ethnic group living in the
region of Kashmir who speak the Kashmiri language. Kashmiri is "a
Northwestern Dardic language of the Indo-Aryan branch of the
Indo-Iranian subfamily of the Indo-European language family."[5] which
is also known as Koshur and hence are classified as a Dardic people.

History :-

Originally,
the Kashmiris were mostly Buddhist, Hindu, and Pagan. Islam was
introduced by Sufi saints from Central Asia, Hazrat Bulbul Shah of
Anatolia being the most prominent of them. Prince Rinchin of Ladakh, a
Buddhist who was living in Jammu & Kashmir at the time came under
the influence of Saint Bulbul Shah and converted to Islam. Later on
after the defeat of the Hindu ruler Suhadeva by Dulchu, Suhadeva fled
Kashmir, and Rinchin became King of Jammu & Kashmir and adopted the
name Malik Saduruddin. Eventually the majority of Kashmiris adopted
Islam and became Muslim, although there are still small communities of
Hindus and Sikhs living in the Kashmir Valley, the former being known as
Kashmiri Pandits.. Due to the large Kashmiri diaspora during The 1947
War, at least 6% of Pakistanis claim Kashmiri ancestry.

Kashmiri People are from Dardic ethnic group:-

The
Dards (Devanagari: दारद, Perso-Arabic: دارد) are a group of people
defined by linguistic similarities, and not common ethnicity,
predominantly found in Eastern Afghanistan, in the Indian State of Jammu
and Kashmir and in the Northern Areas and North West Frontier Province
of Pakistan. The term Dard is due to Herodotus who described a land of
the Dardikae in the areas forming northeastern Afghanistan

Origin :-

Parpola
(1999) identifies "Proto-Dardic" with "Proto-Rigvedic" , suggesting
that the Dards are the linguistic descendants of the bearers of proto
Rigvedic culture ca. 1700 BC, pointing to features in certain Dardic
dialects that continue peculiarities of Rigvedic Sanskrit, such as the
gerund in -tvī (p. 189).

Moreover, the Dard people are mentioned
in the Vishnu Purana.[1] They now occupy the area called Dardu, supposed
by Herodotus to be the Dadicæ. As such, during Swati rule, the Dard
people were dominantly Hindu and frequent small scale jihad against Dard
might have been a routine. Dards of of Dras, Gilgit, Skardu, etc.,
embraced Islam after the Muslim invasion of India during the 14th
century A.D. whereas the Dards of Da, Hanu, Bema, Darchik and Garkon did
not accept this and gradually later accepted Buddhism.